<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2017 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
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 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
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 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'A better essay',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="university">
	<h2>University life</h2>
	<p>
		I finished up my discussion assignment for the week:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Adding more $a[RAM] can be the solution to the problem of thrashing, but it&apos;s worth noting that it isn&apos;t always.
			I know someone that keeps about fifty (I am not even exaggerating) tabs open in their Web browser because they want to be able to go back to certain pages.
			However, they often can&apos;t find which tab they need because there are too many to sift through, so they frequently open new tabs to load pages that are already open in other tabs.
			This adds to the tab-management problem.
			All these page, including multiple copied of several pages, take up memory.
			Their machine is incredibly slow, and it wouldn&apos;t surprise me at all if it was because the machine is in a constant state of thrashing.
			Adding more $a[RAM] won&apos;t help though, as it&apos;ll only allow more pages to be loaded.
			The user is still going to keep open way more tabs than they can even manage, and they&apos;re still going to over-burden their machine&apos;s memory.
			The Web browser is only the most extreme example of what&apos;s running on their machine; they hardly ever close out of their other applications either, so there&apos;s a lot of garbage they&apos;re not using any more, but is still taking up system resources including memory and $a[CPU] time.
			Last I saw, they had about five file manager windows open (all to the same directory), about seven $a[PDF] files open, a few LibreOffice Writer documents open, VLC running (though they weren&apos;t actually watching anything on it, and I forget what else.
		</p>
		<p>
			If you use your computer properly, adding more $a[RAM] can eliminate your thrashing problem, if you have one.
			However, if you act like a complete fool in how you use your computer, it&apos;s not really going to help.
			Sometimes, the problem is the limitations of the computer, but other times, the problem is the user.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		My professor finally gave me feedback for last week&apos;s learning journal assignment: &quot;good&quot;.
		That was all.
		Normally, they grade these assignments within a day of my having submitted them, which is much faster than the other professors tend to.
		I think I stumped my professor though when I told them there was no gratis copy of Windows without resorting to piracy though.
		They told me I should&apos;ve downloaded the gratis version in the feedback from the week before, so I explained there was no such thing and asked if they were telling me to pirate Windows.
		No comment on that though.
		Just &quot;good&quot;.
		Too bad, too.
		I was waiting on pins and needles to see how they&apos;d respond, so this was pretty anticlimactic.
	</p>
	<p>
		I looked at the feedback I got from my last Windows-based essay to see how I could improve the one due this week.
		One student that graded my paper was totally on board with the whole &quot;Windows sucks&quot; vibe I was giving off in my anger.
		Another student though called me on it, then wrote me off saying Linux users tend to be preachy.
		They so had my number, and with it, a very valid point.
		I was attacking Windows.
		Windows totally deserves the attack of course, but it&apos;s completely counterproductive foe me to put any of that in my papers.
		All I&apos;m doing is making myself look like a Linux jerk, and in doing so, I&apos;m making Linux users look like jerks.
		Some students will agree, some will disagree, and some won&apos;t care.
		But none are going to switch away from Windows because of some paper a fellow student wrote that happens to include Windows-bashing in it.
		Nor did I ever expect them to.
		My point in writing up my paper the way I did was to show that there isn&apos;t some magical functionality that Windows has and Linux doesn&apos;t.
		Linux is a completely valid $a[OS] and should be allowed for use in completing assignments at University of <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span>.
		This time, I directed the brunt of my frustration directly at the university.
		The entire introduction and conclusion are dedicated to explaining that there&apos;s no reason the school should require this specific software when other software options provide us with the same exact information; these other options should be allowed.
		The rest of the essay answers the questions both for the Windows system and for the Linux system, with almost no attack on Windows anywhere in the essay.
		Admittedly, I did get a little snarky about $a[FAT] and $a[NTFS] having major fragmentation issues, though I admitted these filesystems have the same problems on both Linux and Windows.
		The problem isn&apos;t the $a[OS], but the filesystem.
		Still, it&apos;s hard to <strong>*completely*</strong> bottle my frustration when I&apos;m <strong>*forced*</strong> to use Windows, especially when there&apos;s no good reason for the requirement.
		It is what it is though.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="docmod">
	<h2>Document modifications</h2>
	<p>
		On <a href="/en/weblog/2017/11-November/02.xhtml">2017-11-02</a>, this journal page was modified in order to redact the name of the university.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
